Dementia

"It's not uncommon for people to show the clinical signs and not recognize it as such."Memory lapses can sometimes be little more than annoying, but there's good reason to be checked.

If the cause is depression or a side-effect of medication, chances are good it can be corrected.Even if Alzheimer's is the cause, early detection and treatment can slow onset of its debilitating effects."For some people, the medications are wonderful.

They don't stop the progression of the disease and they don't cure Alzheimer's," Purzycki said.

"But they often cause the manifestations to progress more slowly.

We know that because if people stop taking the medications, they decline to a point they would have been at had they never taken the medications at all."Registration for memory screenings is full, but useful information is available at the seminars for patients and their caregivers who might be the first to identify memory problems in family members."They're for anyone in their 40s or 50s dealing with issues related to aging parents.

People need to know what to look for," he said.

"People with Alzheimer's don't often say, 'I think I have Alzheimer's.' It's often a close family member who notices changes." Recent TalkBack comments about this article Comment on this article No comments currently in TalkBack, be the first one to post!

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Johnston's songs, comic book drawings, audio tapes and musical performances feed off of American pop culture.

And every utterance, lyric, performance and cartoon from his prolific output is mistaken for profundity by hipsters and cult followers.

Jeff Feuerzeig's "The Devil and Daniel Johnston" is undoubtedly the best movie anyone could have made about this unwitting practitioner of "outsider" art.

Having at his disposal a treasure trove of teenage Super-8 movies starring Johnston in multiple roles, a high school audio diary, all of the man's songs and drawings, archival footage of an MTV appearance, recorded telephone conversations and easy access to nearly every key person in the man's life, Feuerzeig creates a cinematic collage that emulates the jumpy rawness of Johnston's own voluminous creations.

The Sony Pictures Classics release, which won the best documentary director award at the 2005 Sundance Film Festival, should develop its own cult following in theaters and later home video.

Whether one buys into the "artistic genius" of folk legend, this movie offers a fascinating portrait of how one man's disturbed psyche allows him to tap creative resources to produce an art that emerges without filters or aesthetic parameters.

Fortuitously, at nearly every major event in Johnston's life, a camera or recording device was seemingly at hand to capture the moment.

Where documentation is missing - when he slipped away to join a ...

(While people suffering from mental illness are often blamed for all the violence, the reality is that most attacks occur in ER and in general wards, not in psychiatric wards, and the greatest contributor to violence is alcohol and drug abuse, not mental illness.) Nurses also deal with people who are under tremendous stress, often in isolation, and they perform procedures that can demand intimate physical contact.

Long waits and inadequate staffing and supervision can ratchet up the tension, and leave nurses more vulnerable.

Nursing has always been a dangerous job, one that is physically and emotionally taxing.

But there is no excuse for what many of Canada's 250,000 nurses have to endure on a daily basis.

Surveys show that three-quarters of nurses fear violence, and that constant worry is one of the greatest impediments to job satisfaction.

Violence is poisoning the work environment and impairing the quality of care.

Yet the frequency and severity of incidents grows ever worse.

It is the responsibility of employers and policy-makers to ensure a safe and secure work environment for all nurses.

It should not be necessary that another on-the-job killing occur to underscore the urgency of the task at hand.

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